BTW, Parental Control is an application which requires lowlevel kernel mode drivers and can take out the OS? It sure sounds like a user space tool to me but then again, who know how/why Microsoft 'designs' its OS the way they do. Well, marketing people probably understand though.;-/
Sorry to reply twice, but if you think of the consequences of parental control in user space you'll realize it's a waste of time putting that feature in.
Also note that parental control is a class of application that is possible with Vista's filter architecture. There is a specific interface, IParentalControl, defined in the Platform SDK which conforming apps can implement. And if the parent installs a parental control app -- some apps like McAfee Home Internet Security have this sort of feature -- they can control what their kids do on their computer.
And about parental control (or any other 3rd party k-mode code for that matter) taking out the OS - well, perhaps OS writers should have heeded Intel's original advice and made device drivers run in ring 1 instead of ring 0. Neither Linux nor Windows nor OSX/86 does this, IIRC, presumably for efficiency. Maybe the Hurd will get it right?
The is before they asked me to install Linux after their systems failed for the last time.... But somehow, a bunch of hackers can put together a system and drivers for Linux which work on a good deal of existing systems that Microsoft can't do with billion of dollars over a decade of development and with thousands of developers paid top dollar.
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. You're comparing generic phone support for Windows versus personalized support for Linux installation/customization done by yourself for your mother-in-law. This is no testament to the superiority of Linux, it's a testament to the superiority of the 'local expert' in solving problems... had you been a Mac guru you'd have recommended she buy a Mac as a solution to all her ills-- because, really, your 'solution' is not to fix her immediate problem, it is to get her on a platform you're comfortable with so that you can deal with future problems.
Unfortunately the local expert method doesn't scale (even considering you can find helpful LUG members in plenty of places). What if your mother-in-law moves to Florida? What if (say) you and your wife have a messy divorce and are no longer on speaking terms with her mom? Who does she go to for support then?
Incidentally, this is why most large Linux rollouts these days are in city councils and schools-- where the end-user has no choice in the matter, it's a matter of support convenience for the IT department -- and they configure the OS and desktop exactly so that they get something they can support. It's something to think about every time the rah-rah-Linux-Choice-Freedom chant begins around the intarwebs.
> it sure seems like way too many applications or mystery causes can take out Microsoft operating systems
They aren't 'mystery causes' to folk who can read crash dump output, or run kernel debuggers. They're either due to 3rd party kernel mode code crashes, hardware failure or (rarely) problems with Windows kernel subsystems.
> I wonder what 3rd party drivers and apps are being loaded on these 'critics' machines and causing them to say that MS Vista RC1 crashes and hangs are fewer than expected IN LESS THAN 7 DAYS?
To name a few: Antivirus. Parental Control. IDS. IT Provisioning and Monitoring. (Keep in mind that Windows runs on much more diverse environments than desktop Linux or Macs, and that Vista's architecture for most k-mode apps is new to this release and this is the time for 3rd party k-mode app vendors to do final testing; thankfully the new arch minimizes both debugging and the amount of code to test).
> This job description specifically does NOT include the necessity for the kernel to barf on "illegal operations" performed by 3rd party apps
Because, of course, God knows 3rd party apps cannot run in kernel mode.
I've seen a lot of machines run XP, and all the bluescreens I've encountered have been due to a bad wifi card driver written by a company that had gone bust, and an IT department sniffer app (Centennial's Discovery) that would run once a day and invariably blue-screen if a virtual PC was running at the same time.
(And these things are pretty easy to troubleshoot if you bother to look at the crash log files, heck there's even a tool for it these days.)
> I think if the startup sound in Vista is non-deactivatable, then the most likely cause is due to programmers capitulating at getting the sound controls activated before the sound starts
No, it's because someone at Microsoft wanted to make the audio bits part of the Vista 'experience'. The thinking behind making the sound compulsory is that most laptops and desktops are supposed to have hardware mute buttons (and most do -- except for some sorry-ass HP/Dell owners). What'll probably happen is that they'll add a registry/powertoy override in the end.
> or because somebody insisted that since Microsoft payed some bigname composer to make this one sound
Actually, they got Robert Fripp. And not just for the startup sound -- he's doing all the sounds in Vista.
I have no idea why no other brands do this, but having an actual volume control is extremely useful. I hardly ever touch windows' horrible software volume control and just leave it at maximum.
Which is why Vista's volume control is actually useful - it can control volume per app (thanks to its new audio stack)... no more getting an earsplitting jingle when your mail arrives because you set the volume to max on that movie you were playing.
The only problem is that software by its very essence is duplicatable -- that and Moore's law make anything that's just software (like games) mass-market by definition.
And if it isn't mass-market now, because your game needs a supercomputer and a $100k haptic device to run, you can bet your britches that Intel will be making those chips for $120 in 5 years time, and Logitech will be selling those haptic devices for $49 in 8.
(This is also what makes computing -- and computing-derived technology like the Internet -- so fundamentally democratic, btw.)
Of course, the fact that Vista has this feature must've something to do with Apple's decision to ship it now. As usual, Apple has better branding though -- Microsoft calls it 'Previous Versions', Apple calls it 'Time Machine'.
> It's much more clever sending the best students to the best schools, instead of sending those with the richest parents.
I'm not familiar with the Scandinavian education system, however I am familiar with other 'free' higher education systems. I'm sure the Scandinavian ones have a high standard of education, but I wonder if they have some of the flaws the other free systems have.
How did the 'best' schools get created? Did they get created with government money? Or did they start privately and were later made free-for-all?
Is there a Finnish or Norwegian equivalent of Stanford, which was set up with private money (and is even today quite expensive) because the establishment in those days thought MIT and Harvard was 'enough'? To put it another way, is state-budgeting limiting the growth of Scandinavian higher education?
Further, if you look at the free/subsidized higher education in Asia (and to some extent even France), you see an interesting trend: the best are very good indeed, but the quality of education falls off quite dramatically after that. The reason being that taxes only go so far, and countries tend to finance institutions of higher education keeping national prestige in mind (hence the French Grandes écoles and the Indian IITs). Compare this with the US where they Ivy league has catchet mainly because of the age of the institutions, but insitutes like Rensselaer can hold their own despite not having the prestige associated with Ivy leagues. What I'm trying to say is that the US system has a lot more depth than state-supported systems elsewhere.
Incidentally, the GP noted that all the free education is financed by taxes, the hope being the student will pay taxes too someday. (Finland IIRC has pretty high taxes.) So how does you feel about Linus, who's presumably having to pay no taxes now that he's living in the US? (he had a Finnish university education AFAIK). Apparently a lot of successful Scandinavians do this as well.
Guide to useless XP services... I don't think all the ones they mention are 'useless', for example SSDP Discovery is very useful to those using UPnP DSL/Cable modems and UPnP-savvy software like uTorrent or Azureus, but it's still a good article: http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?a rticle_id=70112&cat_id=584
I shouldn't have used the word "_due_ process", it's enough to ask what _process_ did they use in choosing what sites to block. The IT Act (like many other Indian laws) gives overbroad powers to unelected bureaucrats, the implied condition is that they'll be used sparingly (a model probably inspired by British law, which also does the same).
What we see here is nothing less than blocking sites some random bureaucrat didn't like. To use a legal phrase, there is no bright-line definition for what cannot be banned in India. If the Supreme Court doesn't throw this one out on its ass, I'm afraid pretty soon the Indians are going to have to use their constitution for toilet paper*.
*Yeah, I know many Indians don't use toilet paper:)
Did you even read http://princesskimberly.blogspot.com/ which is an American writing about how she's "bored"? Not a mention of Muslims there! (I know/.-ers would like such blogs banned forthwith, but that's carrying a joke too far)
Even otherwise, hinduunity.org etc publicize organizations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal in India. Now, I don't like these parties (hoodlums mostly) but if they are legal in India then their beliefs oughtn't be blocked from the 'net.
> And while India is not a declared Muslim country like the ones in the middle east
WTF does that mean? Yeah, there are a lot of Muslims in India. Only Indonesia has more. But India has a constitution too (unfortunately it doesn't protect free speech as rigidly as the US constitution does) and Indians are going to have to decide how much free speech's worth to them.
Thankfully, most Indians I know have been appalled that an anonymous bureaucrat can secretly, silently order ISPs to block URLs. They can't even claim the fig leaf of "national security", blocking exposingtheleft.blogspot.com and princesskimberly.blogspot.com give the lie to that. If they're blocking innocuous blogs today, what'll they block tomorrow? Would you like it if they did it to the press? If not, where's your outrage when they're doing it to the printing presses of the 21st century (websites)? Is this really the country you want to live in?
> The govt. had infact NOT asked for all blogs to be banned. It was just ISPs being clueluess.
I don't know whether the ISPs were clueless, but they certainly revealed the rot in what the Indians like to call democracy.
What the government asked for is worse, it was a slap in the face for freedom of speech. There was NO due process. It was a "silent" order given to the ISPs by some anonymous bureaucrats asking for _specific URLs_ to be blocked, regardless of legal merit (look at princesskimberly.blogspot.com and exposingtheleft.blogspot.com and ask yourself why they were blocked).
This is no worse than anonymous bowdlerizing arbitrary bits from books. Oh wait, the Indian government is already experienced in doing that, they banned Rushdie's _Satanic Verses_ before any Moslem country could do so.
In a way what the ISPs did is *commendable*, it drew attention to the power bureaucrats wield in India. Of course, these very same bureaucrats now cry foul and are blaming the ISPs because their little game is exposed. But what due process did they use in choosing what sites to block? Inquiring minds want to know, and it's my fond hope that the government will soon find out that modern Indians are far less tolerant of abuses of power than Indians of yesteryear (Indians will know what I'm talking about here, I've family in India so I know).
You were probably joking, but that server's running some flavor of Unix (Netcraft doesn't say what) and MySQL/PHP, but it's still somehow Windows' fault? Slashdot logic indeed. In the meantime, MySpace became the most-visited site on the 'net running Windows servers.
Virtual PC is comparable to VMWare Workstation. VMWare Server (earlier called GSX?) is more analogous to Microsoft's Virtual Server, which is also free for Windows users.
> I'm never sure when I'm supposed to laugh, so I just sit there in awkward silence for 2 hours.:(
No kidding. I saw the BBC's _The Office_, and I was appalled by what I saw was a scathing indictment of the Kafkaesque futility and nihilism in modern-day small-town England. Then someone told me it was a comedy and that I was supposed to laugh at it.
The day India writes a new government declaring all people born equal (not this silly caste shit) and every person is allowed or even encouraged to own guns, and all 400M of the ones living on a dollar a day have the opportunity to pull themselves up and make something of themselves - then THAT will be the beginning of the 'Century of India.' 1.4M gooks making $20k a year, blowing it on a Blackberry and some cocaine instead of investing it in the future of the country... not so much.
I wish Slashdot had a -1, Dumbass mod for posts like this. The 'silly caste shit' has been illegal in India since 1947. Already caste is pretty much irrelevant in urban India and is -- slowly, India's a big place -- losing its tenterhooks in ruralia. Ironically, because of affirmative action-ish laws and strategic voting by minorities, historically 'upper' castes today find it hard to be well represented in government and the legislature. But hey, it's much more fun to rail against the Brahmin man putting down the Shudra brother on the streets of Calcutta.
> and every person is allowed or even encouraged to own guns
Ironically, I am pro-gun rights but what the fuck has that to do with anything? Europe is doing just fine without gun rights. So's much of the world. Also, Indian villagers own plenty of arms. They're just not firearms, they have pretty lethal country knives and know how to use them. And remember India's police (like British police) aren't armed-- only high ranking officers or special teams have arms (usually 50s-vintage rifles).
1.4M gooks making $20k a year, blowing it on a Blackberry and some cocaine instead of investing it in the future of the country... not so much.
Ah, at last the epithets come out. This must be how the 'ugly American' stories get about. FYI, most of those 1.4M 'gooks' are spending their salaries buying nice homes, cars (including those from GM and Ford), laptops and air conditioners. Sheesh. What a crime-- trying to live a decent middle-class life in a country where the poor are far worse off than American poor.
Apple must've been happy that lots of geeks/nerds/whatever switched to Apple and were singing its praises, but you must remember that the Mac was never a geek machine and did great and had terrific fan following -- in fact most geeks stayed away from the classic Mac because of the lack of a command line, stdin and stdout.
Lots of geeks discovered the joys of Apple hardware with OSX because, well, it was based off Darwin-- but make no mistake, Apple won't even miss these guys-- they have their own rabid contingent who won't switch no matter what. They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs.
Also, Mark Pilgrim is running Ubuntu on an Apple machine, so Apple is still getting his money. Cory Doctorcow OTOH has switched to a Lenovo (IIRC).
I really wonder what code you're writing. In *some* cases, excessive indentation is unavoidable, especially in web environments. But in most cases, excessive indentation is a sign of poor programming, and you should probably recheck your code to see if it can be improved.
Oh, and I use Linux (and BSD) because of the way they let me decide on my environment (which hasn't changed in look and feel for about 6 years). Neither KDE nor GNOME satisfy those goals.
As I said, if you don't like the way they do things, you can be your own provider. Just don't expect distributors/authors to design software that appeals to your sense of aesthetics and ignore 99% of the user population out there.
Also, about that "my environment hasn't changed for 6 years" thing? You may wear it as a badge of pride, but you'll want to make sure you're not really saying "I found my comfort zone in 2000, every human-factors improvement since then can go to hell". In other words, stasis can be comforting, but it sure ain't progress.
> Who says that the US method is the correct form.
I didn't say use commas for digit grouping and periods for decimal points when writing in a hypothetical US-specific language. The accepted form in *English* -- the language -- is commas and periods (with the commas substitutable by spaces if you so wish, esp in.uk and.au) . I don't care if the writer is an European or an Orang-otan, if they're writing in English they should use the corect form. I would likewise expect correct form from an English speaker (American or otherwise) if they were writing in German or French.
If you're too dim to differentiate the US and English, it's not really my problem.
> Oh, and personal abuse diminishes you, not me.
I described a style of writing as moronic, not you specifically. Perhaps you ought to brush up on your reading comprehension? On the other hand, if you're the sort who writes like that, you're definitely a moron. Or perhaps a cretin.
Slashdot Mirror
Wo, since when's kdawson a Slashdot editor? Anyhow, if he does half the job he did with TBTF, /.'s going to rock soon.
All the best, Keith!
--former TBTF reader
BTW, Parental Control is an application which requires lowlevel kernel mode drivers and can take out the OS? It sure sounds like a user space tool to me but then again, who know how/why Microsoft 'designs' its OS the way they do. Well, marketing people probably understand though. ;-/
Sorry to reply twice, but if you think of the consequences of parental control in user space you'll realize it's a waste of time putting that feature in.
Also note that parental control is a class of application that is possible with Vista's filter architecture. There is a specific interface, IParentalControl, defined in the Platform SDK which conforming apps can implement. And if the parent installs a parental control app -- some apps like McAfee Home Internet Security have this sort of feature -- they can control what their kids do on their computer.
And about parental control (or any other 3rd party k-mode code for that matter) taking out the OS - well, perhaps OS writers should have heeded Intel's original advice and made device drivers run in ring 1 instead of ring 0. Neither Linux nor Windows nor OSX/86 does this, IIRC, presumably for efficiency. Maybe the Hurd will get it right?
The is before they asked me to install Linux after their systems failed for the last time. ... But somehow, a bunch of hackers can put together a system and drivers for Linux which work on a good deal of existing systems that Microsoft can't do with billion of dollars over a decade of development and with thousands of developers paid top dollar.
... had you been a Mac guru you'd have recommended she buy a Mac as a solution to all her ills-- because, really, your 'solution' is not to fix her immediate problem, it is to get her on a platform you're comfortable with so that you can deal with future problems.
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. You're comparing generic phone support for Windows versus personalized support for Linux installation/customization done by yourself for your mother-in-law. This is no testament to the superiority of Linux, it's a testament to the superiority of the 'local expert' in solving problems
Unfortunately the local expert method doesn't scale (even considering you can find helpful LUG members in plenty of places). What if your mother-in-law moves to Florida? What if (say) you and your wife have a messy divorce and are no longer on speaking terms with her mom? Who does she go to for support then?
Incidentally, this is why most large Linux rollouts these days are in city councils and schools-- where the end-user has no choice in the matter, it's a matter of support convenience for the IT department -- and they configure the OS and desktop exactly so that they get something they can support. It's something to think about every time the rah-rah-Linux-Choice-Freedom chant begins around the intarwebs.
> it sure seems like way too many applications or mystery causes can take out Microsoft operating systems
They aren't 'mystery causes' to folk who can read crash dump output, or run kernel debuggers. They're either due to 3rd party kernel mode code crashes, hardware failure or (rarely) problems with Windows kernel subsystems.
> I wonder what 3rd party drivers and apps are being loaded on these 'critics' machines and causing them to say that MS Vista RC1 crashes and hangs are fewer than expected IN LESS THAN 7 DAYS?
To name a few: Antivirus. Parental Control. IDS. IT Provisioning and Monitoring. (Keep in mind that Windows runs on much more diverse environments than desktop Linux or Macs, and that Vista's architecture for most k-mode apps is new to this release and this is the time for 3rd party k-mode app vendors to do final testing; thankfully the new arch minimizes both debugging and the amount of code to test).
> This job description specifically does NOT include the necessity for the kernel to barf on "illegal operations" performed by 3rd party apps
Because, of course, God knows 3rd party apps cannot run in kernel mode.
I've seen a lot of machines run XP, and all the bluescreens I've encountered have been due to a bad wifi card driver written by a company that had gone bust, and an IT department sniffer app (Centennial's Discovery) that would run once a day and invariably blue-screen if a virtual PC was running at the same time.
(And these things are pretty easy to troubleshoot if you bother to look at the crash log files, heck there's even a tool for it these days.)
> I think if the startup sound in Vista is non-deactivatable, then the most likely cause is due to programmers capitulating at getting the sound controls activated before the sound starts
No, it's because someone at Microsoft wanted to make the audio bits part of the Vista 'experience'. The thinking behind making the sound compulsory is that most laptops and desktops are supposed to have hardware mute buttons (and most do -- except for some sorry-ass HP/Dell owners). What'll probably happen is that they'll add a registry/powertoy override in the end.
> or because somebody insisted that since Microsoft payed some bigname composer to make this one sound
Actually, they got Robert Fripp. And not just for the startup sound -- he's doing all the sounds in Vista.
I have no idea why no other brands do this, but having an actual volume control is extremely useful. I hardly ever touch windows' horrible software volume control and just leave it at maximum.
... no more getting an earsplitting jingle when your mail arrives because you set the volume to max on that movie you were playing.
Which is why Vista's volume control is actually useful - it can control volume per app (thanks to its new audio stack)
> a multi million dollar VR porn simulator?
Actually, both you and the GP make great points.
The only problem is that software by its very essence is duplicatable -- that and Moore's law make anything that's just software (like games) mass-market by definition.
And if it isn't mass-market now, because your game needs a supercomputer and a $100k haptic device to run, you can bet your britches that Intel will be making those chips for $120 in 5 years time, and Logitech will be selling those haptic devices for $49 in 8.
(This is also what makes computing -- and computing-derived technology like the Internet -- so fundamentally democratic, btw.)
Of course, the fact that Vista has this feature must've something to do with Apple's decision to ship it now. As usual, Apple has better branding though -- Microsoft calls it 'Previous Versions', Apple calls it 'Time Machine'.
> It's much more clever sending the best students to the best schools, instead of sending those with the richest parents.
I'm not familiar with the Scandinavian education system, however I am familiar with other 'free' higher education systems. I'm sure the Scandinavian ones have a high standard of education, but I wonder if they have some of the flaws the other free systems have.
How did the 'best' schools get created? Did they get created with government money? Or did they start privately and were later made free-for-all?
Is there a Finnish or Norwegian equivalent of Stanford, which was set up with private money (and is even today quite expensive) because the establishment in those days thought MIT and Harvard was 'enough'? To put it another way, is state-budgeting limiting the growth of Scandinavian higher education?
Further, if you look at the free/subsidized higher education in Asia (and to some extent even France), you see an interesting trend: the best are very good indeed, but the quality of education falls off quite dramatically after that. The reason being that taxes only go so far, and countries tend to finance institutions of higher education keeping national prestige in mind (hence the French Grandes écoles and the Indian IITs). Compare this with the US where they Ivy league has catchet mainly because of the age of the institutions, but insitutes like Rensselaer can hold their own despite not having the prestige associated with Ivy leagues. What I'm trying to say is that the US system has a lot more depth than state-supported systems elsewhere.
Incidentally, the GP noted that all the free education is financed by taxes, the hope being the student will pay taxes too someday. (Finland IIRC has pretty high taxes.) So how does you feel about Linus, who's presumably having to pay no taxes now that he's living in the US? (he had a Finnish university education AFAIK). Apparently a lot of successful Scandinavians do this as well.
Guide to useless XP services ... I don't think all the ones they mention are 'useless', for example SSDP Discovery is very useful to those using UPnP DSL/Cable modems and UPnP-savvy software like uTorrent or Azureus, but it's still a good article: http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?a rticle_id=70112&cat_id=584
I shouldn't have used the word "_due_ process", it's enough to ask what _process_ did they use in choosing what sites to block. The IT Act (like many other Indian laws) gives overbroad powers to unelected bureaucrats, the implied condition is that they'll be used sparingly (a model probably inspired by British law, which also does the same).
:)
What we see here is nothing less than blocking sites some random bureaucrat didn't like. To use a legal phrase, there is no bright-line definition for what cannot be banned in India. If the Supreme Court doesn't throw this one out on its ass, I'm afraid pretty soon the Indians are going to have to use their constitution for toilet paper*.
*Yeah, I know many Indians don't use toilet paper
Did you even read http://princesskimberly.blogspot.com/ which is an American writing about how she's "bored"? Not a mention of Muslims there! (I know /.-ers would like such blogs banned forthwith, but that's carrying a joke too far)
Even otherwise, hinduunity.org etc publicize organizations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal in India. Now, I don't like these parties (hoodlums mostly) but if they are legal in India then their beliefs oughtn't be blocked from the 'net.
> And while India is not a declared Muslim country like the ones in the middle east
WTF does that mean? Yeah, there are a lot of Muslims in India. Only Indonesia has more. But India has a constitution too (unfortunately it doesn't protect free speech as rigidly as the US constitution does) and Indians are going to have to decide how much free speech's worth to them.
Thankfully, most Indians I know have been appalled that an anonymous bureaucrat can secretly, silently order ISPs to block URLs. They can't even claim the fig leaf of "national security", blocking exposingtheleft.blogspot.com and princesskimberly.blogspot.com give the lie to that. If they're blocking innocuous blogs today, what'll they block tomorrow? Would you like it if they did it to the press? If not, where's your outrage when they're doing it to the printing presses of the 21st century (websites)? Is this really the country you want to live in?
> The govt. had infact NOT asked for all blogs to be banned. It was just ISPs being clueluess.
I don't know whether the ISPs were clueless, but they certainly revealed the rot in what the Indians like to call democracy.
What the government asked for is worse, it was a slap in the face for freedom of speech. There was NO due process. It was a "silent" order given to the ISPs by some anonymous bureaucrats asking for _specific URLs_ to be blocked, regardless of legal merit (look at princesskimberly.blogspot.com and exposingtheleft.blogspot.com and ask yourself why they were blocked).
This is no worse than anonymous bowdlerizing arbitrary bits from books. Oh wait, the Indian government is already experienced in doing that, they banned Rushdie's _Satanic Verses_ before any Moslem country could do so.
In a way what the ISPs did is *commendable*, it drew attention to the power bureaucrats wield in India. Of course, these very same bureaucrats now cry foul and are blaming the ISPs because their little game is exposed. But what due process did they use in choosing what sites to block? Inquiring minds want to know, and it's my fond hope that the government will soon find out that modern Indians are far less tolerant of abuses of power than Indians of yesteryear (Indians will know what I'm talking about here, I've family in India so I know).
You were probably joking, but that server's running some flavor of Unix (Netcraft doesn't say what) and MySQL/PHP, but it's still somehow Windows' fault? Slashdot logic indeed. In the meantime, MySpace became the most-visited site on the 'net running Windows servers.
> Can I use Yahoo or MSN messengers through a webpage?
http://webmessenger.msn.com/. Or Google [Yahoo Web Messenger].
Virtual PC is comparable to VMWare Workstation. VMWare Server (earlier called GSX?) is more analogous to Microsoft's Virtual Server, which is also free for Windows users.
> Logs them off or supsends their session, which can be gotten back later? I seem to remember the latter.
Locks them out really (not technically a suspend). The GP was wrong.
> I'm never sure when I'm supposed to laugh, so I just sit there in awkward silence for 2 hours. :(
No kidding. I saw the BBC's _The Office_, and I was appalled by what I saw was a scathing indictment of the Kafkaesque futility and nihilism in modern-day small-town England. Then someone told me it was a comedy and that I was supposed to laugh at it.
The day India writes a new government declaring all people born equal (not this silly caste shit) and every person is allowed or even encouraged to own guns, and all 400M of the ones living on a dollar a day have the opportunity to pull themselves up and make something of themselves - then THAT will be the beginning of the 'Century of India.' 1.4M gooks making $20k a year, blowing it on a Blackberry and some cocaine instead of investing it in the future of the country ... not so much.
... not so much.
I wish Slashdot had a -1, Dumbass mod for posts like this. The 'silly caste shit' has been illegal in India since 1947. Already caste is pretty much irrelevant in urban India and is -- slowly, India's a big place -- losing its tenterhooks in ruralia. Ironically, because of affirmative action-ish laws and strategic voting by minorities, historically 'upper' castes today find it hard to be well represented in government and the legislature. But hey, it's much more fun to rail against the Brahmin man putting down the Shudra brother on the streets of Calcutta.
> and every person is allowed or even encouraged to own guns
Ironically, I am pro-gun rights but what the fuck has that to do with anything? Europe is doing just fine without gun rights. So's much of the world. Also, Indian villagers own plenty of arms. They're just not firearms, they have pretty lethal country knives and know how to use them. And remember India's police (like British police) aren't armed-- only high ranking officers or special teams have arms (usually 50s-vintage rifles).
1.4M gooks making $20k a year, blowing it on a Blackberry and some cocaine instead of investing it in the future of the country
Ah, at last the epithets come out. This must be how the 'ugly American' stories get about. FYI, most of those 1.4M 'gooks' are spending their salaries buying nice homes, cars (including those from GM and Ford), laptops and air conditioners. Sheesh. What a crime-- trying to live a decent middle-class life in a country where the poor are far worse off than American poor.
Apple must've been happy that lots of geeks/nerds/whatever switched to Apple and were singing its praises, but you must remember that the Mac was never a geek machine and did great and had terrific fan following -- in fact most geeks stayed away from the classic Mac because of the lack of a command line, stdin and stdout.
Lots of geeks discovered the joys of Apple hardware with OSX because, well, it was based off Darwin-- but make no mistake, Apple won't even miss these guys-- they have their own rabid contingent who won't switch no matter what. They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs.
Also, Mark Pilgrim is running Ubuntu on an Apple machine, so Apple is still getting his money. Cory Doctorcow OTOH has switched to a Lenovo (IIRC).
I really wonder what code you're writing. In *some* cases, excessive indentation is unavoidable, especially in web environments. But in most cases, excessive indentation is a sign of poor programming, and you should probably recheck your code to see if it can be improved.
Linus is already on record saying that tabs == 8 spaces. However (and sorry to burst your bubble) Linus isn't God. He isn't even Moses.
8 spaces makes very little sense for some environments, especially this newfangled web programming thingy all the cool kids are doing these days.
Oh, and I use Linux (and BSD) because of the way they let me decide on my environment (which hasn't changed in look and feel for about 6 years). Neither KDE nor GNOME satisfy those goals.
As I said, if you don't like the way they do things, you can be your own provider. Just don't expect distributors/authors to design software that appeals to your sense of aesthetics and ignore 99% of the user population out there.
Also, about that "my environment hasn't changed for 6 years" thing? You may wear it as a badge of pride, but you'll want to make sure you're not really saying "I found my comfort zone in 2000, every human-factors improvement since then can go to hell". In other words, stasis can be comforting, but it sure ain't progress.
> Who says that the US method is the correct form.
.uk and .au) . I don't care if the writer is an European or an Orang-otan, if they're writing in English they should use the corect form. I would likewise expect correct form from an English speaker (American or otherwise) if they were writing in German or French.
I didn't say use commas for digit grouping and periods for decimal points when writing in a hypothetical US-specific language. The accepted form in *English* -- the language -- is commas and periods (with the commas substitutable by spaces if you so wish, esp in
If you're too dim to differentiate the US and English, it's not really my problem.
> Oh, and personal abuse diminishes you, not me.
I described a style of writing as moronic, not you specifically. Perhaps you ought to brush up on your reading comprehension? On the other hand, if you're the sort who writes like that, you're definitely a moron. Or perhaps a cretin.